An opening on a town council creates turmoil in the community as various members jockey for position.
My Reactions
Described as Rowling’s first novel for adults, I was looking forward to reading it, and the first descriptions seemed almost like a Jeffrey Archer novel of small-town political intrigue. I got it as a hard copy for Xmas (or maybe my wife did?). And after she read it, I ended up setting it aside for a bit before coming back to it. Which turned into years. She wasn’t that excited by it, and so I didn’t dash to it. Now that I’ve read it, I totally get her reaction.
It’s generally depressing from one end to the other. Some reviewers described it as “darkly comic” but I didn’t see anything comic. Maybe the rape of a teen? The completely dysfunctional families? The poverty? The adultery? The death of children?
I couldn’t find hardly a single character to care about, more like a low-rent version of Friday Night Lights without any source or inkling of success by anyone. The writing is fine, just the story sucked.
I rarely pick up an ebook from the Amazon collection of First Reads and promptly pass on it once I get it. I don’t take just anything, I’m a bit picky in adding something to my TBR list, but a name like Alice Hoffman is a good selling point. Strong history, good writing, and it was just a short story called “The Bookstore Sisters”. It had elements of a backstory, something that went wrong between two sisters that inherited a bookstore, etc. Sounded interesting, perhaps.
So I gave it a go. It was a bit off-putting with some of the, well, “hatred” or aggression that seemed to permeate the first bit. Like characters who don’t just dislike each other, or that might be a bit dysfunctional, but more undercurrents that the people are just not very nice to begin with. It’s hard to put a finger on examples in the first pages. Maybe it is the constant whining from the sister who stayed, “Well, you did this and this and this and this and this and this,” aka emotional blackmail of “if you loved me, you’d do this.”. The sister who left should have told her to sod off.
But what turned me off was the 40% mark. The sister who stayed has a daughter who wrote asking for help, and when the prodigal sister returns, the niece is even at the ferry with a sign that says “Help” on it. Really? Makes no sense, honestly. And as the returning sister is about to get off, the niece is waving to her. Okay, I guess. But then here is how the niece greets her:
“It took you long enough,” Violet said. “You’re the last person off.”
“You don’t look anything like my mother.”
“You do,” Isabel said.
“I’m nothing like her,” Violet said. “But you wouldn’t know since you don’t know the first thing about me. I found your address on an old envelope in my mother’s night table drawer. I didn’t know if you’d really come, but now that you’re here, maybe you can help for once in your life. Just don’t expect me to like you.”
The bold is added by me. Right. So an 11yo needs help, writes to the aunt she doesn’t know, and greets her with the phrase “help for once in your life”. And the aunt goes “okey dokey”? Seriously?
First of all, the 11yo would NOT greet her like that after waving and playing with a dog, etc. Nor is any adult likely to take that “slap” from a kid. It’s rude and abusive, and I stopped reading immediately. I don’t care what happens in the rest of the story. If that is how you have people interact, every phrase some sort of emotional abuse, I’ll pass. In the instance, not only would I have ripped a strip off the kid verbally, I would have turned around, and left on the spot. If the main character is going to be a doormat, I don’t have much desire to read about them.
Is that overly harsh for a short story? Perhaps. But at least it was free. And 42000 other people reviewed it for a combined 4.1 review. Most of the reviews that are critical talk about the implausibility of it all, including the niece that I mentioned. Apparently, they all got even worse later in the story. Generally, the returning sister behaved with grace and accepted all slings and arrows to save the day. Yawn.
Robin goes undercover in a cult, attempting to retrieve a member of a client’s family. And while it’s definitely a cult, there is a thin veneer of logic to the approach with a touch of illusionist magic.
What I Liked
The scenes inside the cult are awesome, and undercover Robin is great. Well worth the price of admission, and if the previous book ended on a potential cliff-hanger relationship-wise, this one goes nuclear in the last few pages. And, fingers crossed, the Charlotte and Matthew residue is finally gone for good.
What I Didn’t Like
I’m still struggling with long stretches where not much is happening given the length of the books, as they drastically need more aggressive editing. I love the plots and characters, but man some parts just dragggggggggg.
A co-creator of a popular online comic comes to Robin and Strike for help with someone who is harassing her online, days before being murdered.
What I Liked
I love the premise, with the online community, and the picture perfect depiction of some of the people in the chat room and how “dramatic” are their individual behaviours and reactions to mild suspicions and events. I don’t know if people who are not versed in online communities would find it relatable, or accessible, but I loved it, even if it breaks the fourth wall a bit. But more importantly, the scene at the end of the previous book with Cormoran and Robin out for her birthday is continued at the start of the book, and actually leads to the possibility of a kiss. And by the end, there’s a few opened eyes, if not at the same time.
What I Didn’t Like
Again, Rowling really needs an editor to take out the endless, mindless side quests. Again, long periods of time with almost nothing happening, and clocking in at more than 2x the original one in the series. I had hoped we were done with Charlotte in the previous book, but no, she’s back and causing boring crap.
The Bottom Line
Great view of an online community and the passions run deep
A cold case arrives from a woman in a pub back home (where Cormoran’s aunt lives). Her mother disappeared back in ’74 and all leads went to nought. Did she die? Did a serial killer get her? Did she take a runner?
What I Liked
I love the premise of cold cases and the ability to ferret out a small nugget from one witness that leads to a new nugget from another, etc., until you can start to find actual threads to pull and unwind the whole tapestry of mystery. This one does that in spades. The missing mother was working in a doctor’s office, and there were lots of niggly threads that could have been the reason for her disappearance. Not to mention the serial killer running around. And for backstory, you get to see Cormoran dealing with his extended family a little more personally than simply as throw-away references.
What I Didn’t Like
There seems to be an assumption that if a book is good at 400 pages, it must be awesome at twice the length. Rowling ballooned the Harry Potter series as it went on and has done the same with the Strike series. This book is more than double the size of the first in the series, and it needs serious editing. Long stretches with very little happening. And as the “case” mushrooms into larger combinations of cases, at least two of the threads read more like ridiculous happenstances than actual solutions. And the crap with Charlotte is long past its expiry date.
The Bottom Line
Deeply buried in the flotsam is a mystery dying to breathe
